I have been shocked by the lack of effort put into social technology to lengthen timelines. As I see it one of the only chances we have is increasing the number of people (specifically normies, as that is the group with true scale) who understand and care about the risk arguments, but almost nobody seems to be trying to achieve this. Am I missing something?
No, I think outreach is a neglected cause area because AGI seemed implausible 10 or even 5 years ago. I think it is now much easier for people to imagine us getting there, and thus the time is ripe.
I think there’s a delay in outreach for three reasons.
There’s substantial conflict within the community about the effect of doing that outreach. Trying to sound the alarm might just convince the whole world that AGI is imminent, and the first one there controls the world. That would accelerate progress dramatically. For some reason, normies do not seem to understand this. But the compelling logic would convince many if there were efforts to get everyone to think about it. This is why I’ve kept my mouth largely closed, and probably why many others have as well.
We as a community strongly believe it won’t work. We assume that the coordination problems are too large. But we don’t think about it a ton, for multiple reasons including 1 and 3 here. There are strong arguments that we should at least think about it more.
The types of people who tend to take abstract arguments, like AGI risk, seriously are typically not the types of people who want to take on massive social projects. There are many exceptions, like Rob Miles, but I think the averages make a difference in our approach as a community.
I do think the community is moving toward focusing more on this angle. And that we probably should.
I have been shocked by the lack of effort put into social technology to lengthen timelines. As I see it one of the only chances we have is increasing the number of people (specifically normies, as that is the group with true scale) who understand and care about the risk arguments, but almost nobody seems to be trying to achieve this. Am I missing something?
No, I think outreach is a neglected cause area because AGI seemed implausible 10 or even 5 years ago. I think it is now much easier for people to imagine us getting there, and thus the time is ripe.
For the people disagreeing, I’m curious what part you’re disagreeing with.
I think there’s a delay in outreach for three reasons.
There’s substantial conflict within the community about the effect of doing that outreach. Trying to sound the alarm might just convince the whole world that AGI is imminent, and the first one there controls the world. That would accelerate progress dramatically. For some reason, normies do not seem to understand this. But the compelling logic would convince many if there were efforts to get everyone to think about it. This is why I’ve kept my mouth largely closed, and probably why many others have as well.
We as a community strongly believe it won’t work. We assume that the coordination problems are too large. But we don’t think about it a ton, for multiple reasons including 1 and 3 here. There are strong arguments that we should at least think about it more.
The types of people who tend to take abstract arguments, like AGI risk, seriously are typically not the types of people who want to take on massive social projects. There are many exceptions, like Rob Miles, but I think the averages make a difference in our approach as a community.
I do think the community is moving toward focusing more on this angle. And that we probably should.